Sunday morning coffee

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Jazz, Lusitania

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of James Reese Europe, the bandleader of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters. His death is an unpleasant story: after surviving the horrors of the Great War he was stabbed backstage in the dressing room at a show in Boston by the drummer in his band. I have always suspected that post traumatic stress disorder played a role in the incident. I am involved in a project regarding Europe and the 369th which, if it comes to fruition, I will discuss here on the blog. Until then, I won’t say too much. Europe’s premature death in May 1919 meant that he was not to be a fixture in the Twenties jazz scene. He very much would have been the equal of Sidney Bechet, King Oliver and even Louis Armstrong.

Reese grandson, great-grandson and other descendants were on hand at the Lusitania commemoration last Thursday here in New York. I spoke to them during the reception and can attest that they inherited the charisma and magnetism for which James Europe himself was known. Great grandson Rob is today a bluesman and provided the entertainment at the reception.

Rob Europe playing at Pier A

Enjoy your Sunday.

(top image/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “On patrol in no man’s land” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1919. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/7f1c4fdc-9934-b830-e040-e00a180619d8)

Remembering the Lusitania

07 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Lusitania, Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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This morning I had the good fortune of attending the World War 1 Centennial Commission’s commemoration for the Lusitania. Here are a few pics.

The event was at Pier A on the Battery. This space was refurbished about six months ago and is beautiful. I learned today the the clock tower dates to 1919 is reputedly the first permanent Great War monument constructed in the United States.

Wreaths from different nations. It is important to remember the international aspects of the Lusitania tragedy. Commemorations were taking place all around the world today, often at the same time as this event here in Manhattan at 10:00 am.

Consul General Ms. Barbara Jones of Ireland was one of the speakers. One must remember that the Lusitania was about twelve miles off the coast–easily within sight distance–of Ireland when she was struck. Many local fisherman and others were first responders.

Deputy Consul General Mr. Nick Astbury of Great Britain was another speaker.

Here are the various diplomats, descendants of Lusitania survivors, Cunard representatives, and others at the time to throw the wreaths.

Attendees were welcomed to throw individual flowers.

When it was over forty-five minutes later, there was a reception inside Pier A. The Fire Department marked the event by sailing past.

Spottswood Poles, 1887-1962

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Baseball, Great War centennial, Historiography, Those we remember

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Spottswood Poles, upper right, with the New York Lincoln Giants: May 1912

As a general practice I do not link to things I write for the Park Service or WW1 Centennial Commission’s social media platforms. Tonight though I made an exception for a small piece about ball player and Harlem Hellfighter Spot Poles. It is up on the Strawfoot Facebook page on the left.

I have been reading Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times over the past few weeks. Ritter’s oral history was a seminal event in baseball historiography, coming as it did in the mid-1960s when many of the early players were disappearing. Poles does not appear in the book and his name was only slightly familiar to me until recently. I suspect that he never got his due because he died in 1962, just before many of the players from organized Negro baseball were being rediscovered. Ritter published Glory in 1966. That same year Ted Williams famously said during his Hall of Fame induction that he hoped some day the old Negro players could be represented in Cooperstown in some way. Poles was four years gone by then and there was no one left to speak for him. He nearly did get in to the Hall some years later on the old timers ballot but fell short.

I did not know until writing the vignette that there were over 500 professional ball players who fought in the Great War. When we think of ball players and military service we think of WW2, because we always think of WW2 before WW1. Williams of course was one of the great war heroes of the Second World War. Poles too was a war hero. He reached France around New Years 1918 and fought in all of the major battles through the Armistice.

(image/By Staff Photographer (New York Lincoln Giants Publicity Office) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Frum on the limits of exceptionalism

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial

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The Big Four at the Paris peace conference, May 27, 1919

David Frum, recently returned from a trip to France, has written a sobering and thought-provoking editorial about the lessons he believes Americans should take when commemorating the Great War. I am not the type to wring my hands but Frum offers much to dwell on. I agree with him that the world of 2015 looks much more like the world of 1920 than of 1945. That said, the years after the Japanese surrender on the Missouri were much darker and more violent than we tend to remember. This was true in Europe and truer still in other parts of the world.

This evening when I got home the latest copy of Civil War Monitor was waiting for me in the mailbox. It is the special “War is Over” issue. The past four years have added much to our understanding of the causes and consequences of the War of the Rebellion. The myth of the Lost Cause is held on to now only by the most bitter of bitter enders. They’re still there, but have pretty much lost the war of ideas. In that sense the sesquicentennial served its function. The Great War never had a romantic mythology of its own because the ideas for which Americans went to war, such as Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the League of Nations, came to nothing so quickly. It might be, as Margaret McMillan argues in Paris 1919, that the leaders in Versailles did the best they could given the circumstances. And the circumstances were indeed complicated. I hope Americans, Europeans, and people around the world think soberly about the events of 1914-1919 and what they can teach us in our own difficult times.

(image/”Big four” by Edward N. Jackson (US Army Signal Corps) – U.S. Signal Corps photo. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_four.jpg#/media/File:Big_four.jpg)

Remembering the Great War Down Under

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Memory

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A friend returned from an extended trip to Australia and New Zealand and brought back some handouts of places he visited relating to the Great War.

The brochure states that the eternal flame was first lit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1954.

The memorial itself was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

As you can see, heritage tourism is very much a part of the centennial. When we think of the Australians and New Zealanders in the Great War, we think automatically of Gallipoli. It is important to remember that they and others from the Dominions fought on the Western Front as well. I have seen my share of them in Flanders. The war did much toward severing the umbilical cord with London and creating modern Australia and New Zealand.

It is fascinating how the war penetrated the tiniest corners of the world and touched the lives of millions.

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Unlike during the 50th and even 75th anniversary of the Great War, there are no longer living survivors to tell their tale. The events of 1914-18 now belong to the next generations.

The conversation continues . . .

Rainy Sunday coffee

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Interpretation, Media and Web 2.0

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It is a rainy Sunday here in Brooklyn. My gosh, has it been a full seven days since the last post? It has been a busy week.

I noted with pleasure on Monday that Dan Carlin just released part v of Blueprint for Armageddon. I am listening to the fourth hour of the broadcast as I type this. If you have not heard Carlin’s series on the Great War, I can testify that this is an extraordinary work of interpretation. I stumbled upon the series when the centennial began last summer and listened to them over a weeks-long period going into the fall. I cannot imagine how much time it takes to put these together. It is extraordinarily thoughtful and shows what a passionate generalist can bring to a subject.

Though the United States has not yet entered the fray, the Americans play a larger role in Part v than they do in i-iv. There is an eloquent breakdown of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the leader-up to American involvement. Fittingly Carlin’s Wilson is inscrutable, neither saint nor scapegoat. Carlin understands that history is complicated.

Blueprint requires a significant time commitment–three to five hours apiece–but the reward is high. If you think of how much time you spend on other internet and television content though, it is not that much. One can find them on iTunes and elsewhere too. I usually listen in 30-45 minute chunks when I’m doing something else. As you are stuck inside this January-March, make Blueprint for Armageddon part of your winter.

The Grey Lady’s technicolor Christmas

23 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Great War centennial, Media and Web 2.0

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The Times understood the significance of the Monvel prints and advertised them heavily in the weeks prior to their release.

As you can see from the advertisement above the New York Times published a special Christmas supplement in early December 1914. What made it so special was the inclusion of several full color plates from artist Louis Boutet de Monvel’s Joan of Arc series. Monvel (1851-1913) had done numerous commissions about The Maid of Orléans over the years. Most famously these projects included a best selling children’s book and a ten panel masterwork in the church of the heroine’s hometown of Domrémy. Illness forced Monvel to abandon the latter project when it was twenty percent complete. The images published in the Times were reproductions of six much smaller panels Monvel had completed for Senator William A. Clark just before Monvel died. Clark hung them in his Fifth Avenue home.

Monvel published the children book in 1895. The 15th century French soldiers depicted here look suspiciously like the zouave units of Monvel's time. French soldiers first started wearing these in the mid nineteenth century and continued through the first months of the Great War.

Monvel published the children’s book in 1895. The 15th century French soldiers depicted here look suspiciously like the zouave units of Monvel’s time. French soldiers first started wearing these uniforms in the mid nineteenth century and some continued through the first months of the Great War.

For the prints to be in the New York Times was a big deal. No one knew this more than the New York Times. The article accompanying the supplement describes the project as “The finest single issue of a newspaper ever seen in the world.” That is some serious hyperbole, but it has a ring of truth to it. The public snapped up 335,000 issues of the special edition, and would have bought at least 40,000 more if the printing presses could have handled the demand. Gushing letters of praise poured in from curators and directors at the National Academy of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and what would eventually become the Brooklyn Museum of Art. People wrote in from as far away as Indiana.

The inserts were indeed beautiful, but there was more to the intense public demand than that. By December 1914 the Great War had settled into a stalemate on the Western Front. The war that everyone had thought would be over by Christmas now a muddy stalemate. Joan of Arc, that heroine of the Hundred Years War, was emerging as a potent symbol of Gallic resolve.

War as it is. This is one of the panels Monvel painted for Clark just a few years prior to the Great War. It is easy to see why readers in December 1914 would have been moved and inspired by the series.

It is unfortunate that the Times did not do something with these prints for the Great War Centennial. Indeed it is not even clear if the plates they commissioned a century ago–and paid a small fortune to reproduce–still exist. Thankfully the six panels from which they originated are still here. Senator Clark died in 1925 and bequeathed them to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington.

The Great War took all of France’s human resources. Among the poilus were Monvel’s son Roger and at least one descendent of Joan of Arc herself.

The Great War week-by-week

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Media and Web 2.0

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Today is Thursday, which means there is a new posting from Indy Neidell and the crew at The Great War. In case you have not seen or heard of this, Neidell and his colleagues are chronicling the First World War week by week as it happened one hundred years earlier. The series began on 28 July and has been going ever since. Yours truly learned about it in mid-November and spent most of Thanksgiving weekend catching up. One thing I like about the series is that it is covering the war from a truly world wide perspective. There is especially a great deal of coverage of the war in Eastern Europe. Neidell has an interesting perspective; he is an American currently living in Sweden.

Mediakraft Networks, the production outfit behind the series, has a unique relationship with British Pathé to use the latter’s extensive library of moving imagery. The film clip up top is the introduction from this past July. One may or may not want to watch the entire series–and it is running through November 2018–but here is a link to the entire run so far. It is worth ten minutes a week.

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Category Archives: Great War centennial